Yes, name mean nothing.
Experience is what matters.
What I find fascinating about the discussion, is everybody assumes that when they get on an airplane, that they are getting Sully, a 60-year-old former fighter pilot with decades of experience.
But the industry doesn’t work that way, and it never has.
Pilots, like doctors, or any other profession, have to start somewhere.
And they start in military aircraft, or in the right seat of Regional jets. They graduate from that as they gain experience, and move into the left seat of a regional jet, or the left seat of a military transport, or continue gaining experience in their single seat military aircraft…
Then, once they are fairly experienced, they get hired by a major airline and usually start out in the right seat of a narrow body aircraft. Eventually moving up to the right seat of a wide body, then the left seat of a narrow body, and then the left seat of a wide body
You want Sully? He’s probably in the left seat of an international widebody.
He most certainly is not in the right seat of a Regional jet like this one. That is an entry-level position. It doesn’t pay particularly well. The schedules tend to suck. You fly a lot of legs in one day.
Further, for decades, the industry paid very poorly. And a guy like Sully, who was getting out of the military, probably wouldn’t have even looked at the airlines, and went into defense consulting instead.
Go read the accident report for Colgan air 3407. Take a look at the experience of the right seat Pilot in that crash.
Congress changed the law in response to that crash, and created the “conditional ATP“, requiring a great deal more experience in the right seat of Regional jet. However, most first officers at regionals are still not experienced pilots. They have more experience than they used to, like the the 300 hour person who had to moonlight as a barista to make ends meet, so, now you have a 1000 hour pilot.
Still inexperienced, though.
You don’t have a 20,000 hour pilot like Sully in the right seat of an RJ.
And you never will.